a ghost queen, a bloody countess, and me

This weekend we visited the lovely Peabody Essex Museum. It made me hungry for another trip to the MFA in Boston. I was entertained by unformed novel ideas popping into my head as we looked at maritime portraits, merchants’ china, models of ships. (“Yes, you are a very intriguing beginning. But what happens next?” I asked these ideas. They had no answer.)

My favorite really enjoyed the Yin Yu Tang house, transported from China (click on the site – you can explore the house online!). The rooms were quite small, but people had fewer belongings back then so there wasn’t any clutter. Everything seemed very purposeful, thoughtful, designed according to feng-shui and spirituality, prosperity, all of those good things (as opposed to whatever is available at IKEA). But life wasn’t idyllic; in the audio tour, a new bride accounted being brought to the family and basically acting as a servant to her new in-laws. (Chamberpots here involved). However, they also had a genius contraption called a “child minder”. Basically a tall bucket in which you put your child while you tend to your daily tasks. Yup.

In other news, today’s First Page Panda is Freestyle by Monica S. Baker. It involves a dream portal and time travel. Awesome!

I loved our collection of comics as a kid (especially our anthology of the “The Superhero Women” by Stan Lee) but I haven’t read much lately. It was fun to browse the tables and see what a lot of artists are up to these days. I purchased two prints from young women comic artists: Celine Chapus and Annie Szabla. Celine draws a lot of angels, unicorns, and mermaids, so I was instantly intrigued (seriously, it’s like she’s inside of my head). And Annie’s style is really lush and fairy-tale-like. I hope to follow these two artists, with their distinctive styles.

Not to get high-horse-ish or anything, but I was pleased to purchase art from women artists, in – if this weekend was any indication – such a male-dominated field. Also, the portrayals of women have changed since I read comic books. Those Marvel women I admired were beautiful and, yes, dramatically curvaceous – but many of the comic women now are anatomically impossible. To be fair, the men are also impossibly muscled. I’m not knocking the artistic choice, I just find it interesting. From what I saw, the women drawn by women (and some men, too) were within the realm of un-surgically-altered reality; this was nice to see.

Also, in Comic Con news: in case you hadn’t heard, I met James Marsters. And he is super fantastic.